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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29486820">324 Days</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/pandoradeloeste/pseuds/pandoradeloeste'>pandoradeloeste</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The AM Archives (Podcast), The Bright Sessions (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Fluff and Angst, Gen, Joan's feelings are complicated, Mark Bryant's cursed baking, Owen loves Joan, gentrification, reference to canon injury/death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 23:35:39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,532</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29486820</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/pandoradeloeste/pseuds/pandoradeloeste</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Joan revisits an old haunt.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>324 Days</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollseyes/gifts">dollseyes</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Happy birthday, Caroline!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Joan’s old apartment was in a part of town that had been mostly working-class families. Finishing her MFT and working long hours at the AM hadn’t left her much time to participate in community life, but even she’d noticed when trendy coffee shops and boutiques started replacing the laundromats and corner stores. She’d moved right before a Whole Foods replaced the local Latino supermarket and definitively ended the debate about whose neighborhood it was.</p><p>“Wasn’t there a diner here before?” Owen asked. On the edge of her line of sight, Joan could see him pointing to an artisan chocolate shop.</p><p>“Lafayette Cafeteria.” She slowed down for a minute and squinted up at the facade of the building. The new owners had painted the facade a shiny dark gray that hid any trace of the old lettering. “Remember how the owner used to give us free slices of cake with our order?”</p><p>“He said he’d rather see it eaten than thrown away.” Owen’s voice was warm and smiling, and she closed her eyes briefly and started walking again to stop herself from looking at him. She didn’t need the heartbreak, not tonight. “Speaking of things that should be used rather than thrown away,” he said slowly, “I couldn’t help but notice that those boxes are still in the corner of your office.”</p><p>“Owen, I am <i>off the clock.</i>”</p><p>“There’s no such thing as ‘off the clock’ when you’re a director. You know that as well as I do.”</p><p>Joan’s stomach lurched a little. She always felt off-balance whenever he forgot he was dead. Or she-as-Owen forgot he was dead. Grief was complicated and non-linear, and so apparently were hallucinations of her dead coworker and ex-boyfriend.</p><p>“Joan, it’s been almost a year. We have to do <i>something</i> with those notes. Get an intern to scan and index them. Or better yet, give them to Sam. She said she still wanted to be involved with the AM, just not the day-to-day operation. Outreach would be a good -”</p><p>“We’re not discussing it now,” she said sharply, and ducked into the nearest shop. Owen was usually quieter around other people.</p><p>By pure luck she found herself in a bakery, in front of the last two round challah. Mark kept saying he was going to bake challah, <i>no really Joanie I think I’ve got it this time,</i> but his baking was more about enthusiasm and creativity than following a recipe. High Holidays or not, Joan didn’t want to come home to challah with M&amp;Ms or Skittles baked into it.</p><p>“I think that coffee shop across the street used to be the karaoke bar we visited during the APA conference,” Owen said as Joan left with her bread. “Back in 2011?”</p><p>“Oh god, don’t remind me,” she groaned. “That was the year we all made fools of ourselves singing. . .what was it again?”</p><p>“Little Shop of Horrors. You did an excellent duet with Darren, as I recall.”</p><p>That was a bald-faced lie, she couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, but it was the sort of white lie Owen was fond of telling. He’d sounded much better singing “Brown Eyed Girl”, even if he’d mixed up some of the words because he’d been looking at her instead of the monitor. It had been their song for the next two years.</p><p>“And the next morning Ellie chewed us out for being late.” She cut her eyes toward Owen, careful not to look directly at him. “Which was entirely <i>your</i> fault, I might add.”</p><p>“I don’t remember you complaining at the time.”</p><p>“No, definitely not,” she smiled, and sighed. “I was mortified, though. We were, what, two minutes late? But Ellie took one look at us and <i>knew,</i> and didn’t let me forget it for the rest of the day.” </p><p>“She <i>did</i> always like keeping us off-balance by any means necessary,” he said bitterly.</p><p>Joan smiled bitterly as she turned down the side street leading to her old apartment. “I used to think that made her a good leader. Keeping people on their toes to bring out the best in them. She told me she used to get up at four to beat you to the office, toward the end?”</p><p>“Huh. That. . .explains a lot.”</p><p>“But <i>you</i> never had to get up at four to get people to do what you wanted.” She looked up at the sky, where the sun was starting to get low. “You never used what you knew about people to cut them down and make yourself look better. You just got to know them, and without even trying you made them like you enough to want to give you their best. It’s. . .impressive, truly.” She kept trying to copy his easy manner with patients and staff, but it always looked disingenuous on her.</p><p>Owen was silent for almost a block, then asked quietly, “Joan, what are we doing here?”</p><p>She chewed the inside of her cheek and focused on the addresses on the buildings to stop herself from looking at him. <i>51, 55, 57.</i> “That night when we - after I left, I got rid of a lot of things. Boxed up anything in my apartment that reminded me of you, deleted old emails and pictures, threw out anything that I couldn’t give back to you.”</p><p>“I know,” he said shortly. “Finding that box on my doorstep was. . .memorable, to say the least.”</p><p><i>63, 65.</i> Her old apartment building was coming up soon. “The picture of the mural was one of the things I deleted. I just want to see it again. Maybe take another picture if I can get the camera on my phone to work.”</p><p>“Oh,” Owen said softly. “You know it might not -”</p><p><i>71.</i> The path around the carport was still choked with weeds. She dug in her purse for her phone as she stepped over the missing chunk of cement that hadn’t been replaced since before she moved out. The back apartment on the first floor still had the rusty security bars on it, and the brick wall facing it -</p><p>- was gone. </p><p>For a moment she blinked stupidly at the fairy lights and wood lattice where there should have been crumbling brickwork and a mural of tropical flowers. “Oh,” she said numbly. A soft buzz of conversation, punctuated by an occasional laugh, drifted across the lot. “Um. Okay then.”</p><p>A ghost of pressure on her shoulder. “It’s really all right, Joan -”</p><p>She twitched her shoulder, and the pressure faded as she walked back to the street, fast, bag of challah swinging at her side, avoiding the hole in the sidewalk by muscle memory. “Of course it’s gone,” she said, too loud, not caring who heard her. “Everything else in this neighborhood changed, I don’t know what I expected.”</p><p>It was hard to breathe around the lump in her throat. She stopped and sat on the curb, trying to catch her breath.</p><p>“The mural served its purpose,” Owen said gently. “Once you moved, it wasn’t important anymore.”</p><p>“You made it for me,” she whispered. “Of course it was important. You made it for me, and I just. . .threw it away.” She blew out a shaky breath. “I should have looked it up online before coming here. I was just so sure it would still be there, you know?”</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>Joan made herself look at Owen sitting next to her on the curb. The sun was starting to dip below the horizon, catching in his hair and on the bloodstain on his shirt. “I thought we’d have more time. We were supposed to have years of. . .I don’t know, friendly arguing over AM policy -”</p><p>“Wait, those arguments were supposed to be <i>friendly?</i>”</p><p>“- and going out for drinks with Sam and Mags and Jackson, and putting together that atypical conference you wanted. We needed time - <i>I</i> needed time. I wasted so much of it being angry, and now. . .” She wiped her eyes and took a deep breath.</p><p>“Joan, what did I say? I need you to be happy.” Another whisper of pressure on her shoulder, and this time she let herself lean into it a little. “I don’t have any - well, that’s not true, I have a <i>lot</i> of regrets, but none about our last six months together. I don’t want you to have any about me, okay?”</p><p>Her phone buzzed. Mark had sent a text asking when she would be home. <i>On my way,</i> she replied. <i>How’s the challah?</i></p><p>
  <i>Let’s not talk about it. Any chance you can pick some up?</i>
</p><p>“Come on.” Owen stood up. “Let’s not keep Mark waiting.”</p><p>She would always regret spending so much time and energy hating Owen. But hallucinations notwithstanding, there was no way to ask for the time and energy back, and no way to be forgiven. Atonement meant accepting that there were mistakes she could never undo, pieces of a shared past that could never be recovered, and learning not to make the same mistakes again.</p><p>Music drifted out of the hipster bar on the corner, a familiar riff.</p><p>
  <i>Hey where did we go, days when the rains came. . .</i>
</p><p>“Hey, Owen, they’re playing our song,” she said softly to the empty air next to her.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Apologies to Lin Manuel Miranda for basically stealing "In The Heights" and then writing the inverse.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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